the banshee and the shadow
by RainEcho129
Summary: "Are you a whirlwind, banshee-girl?" he asks. His lips press to that sweetspot under her ear; her knees quake. "A hurricane –" she counters with a whispered almost-snarl " – and I swear to God I'll strip you to the bone." or, Lydia goes looking for the nogitsune.
1. Chapter 1

When the nogitsune wearing Stiles' flesh comes for her, it's with a soft voice and even softer footfalls.

Lydia isn't supposed to be here. In fact, Allison had made her promise _not _to seek him out, with a knowing glint in her eye, an almost-smile. Her best friend knows her a lot better than she thinks she does, and the growing whatever-it-was with Stiles doesn't go unnoticed. Anyway, Allison had clasped her hand mere hours before and had outlined an – _excruciatingly_ detailed – plan of exactly where she would shove her arrows if Lydia disobeyed her.

She hadn't listened, obviously. She knows, possessed or not, Stiles will always come when she calls. Lydia is his tether. Lydia pulled him back once, and she can do it again.

He's exactly how Scott and the others warned he'd be, but she is still unprepared for the utter _absence _in his voice. Sure, there's a kind of bored amusement there – a sadist with his preschool dissection kit – but it's empty of everything that Stiles ever was. The reverence he used to look at her with is gone; in its place, only sick fascination. Only finger-drumming, lip-licking _obsession._

He taunts her, tells her the boy who loves her so is dying, whispers things that he _knows _she can hear. The pipes running along the walls speak, and his awful prophecies (_he's gone he's gone_) weave through the mess of noise to her ears, where they sit and dig their claws into her flesh. She runs because it's all she knows how to do.

Not-Stiles calls for her as she stumbles down the dank hallway of the Echo House. He walks slowly, with purpose, like he knows there's no rush – because he'll get her, eventually. The thought rings true in her head, and terror lances down her spine like ice.

Lydia can mark out the differences between the boy and trickster, draw clear distinction with barely a glance. This not-Stiles is made of sharpest shadow, _skulking _where he should bound, his gait far too smooth and sinuous for the body in which he sits. He drags his fingertips across the walls like they're meant to be knives – and in the darkest corner of her mind, Lydia can hear the screech of metal against stone. Bone.

"Banshee-girl," not-Stiles greets, his voice coaxing and slick, "have you come to paint me red?"

She knows what he means. Red lipstick. Gaze darting to her mouth, over-obvious and meant to intimidate. Sexual innuendo. _Amateur_.

"Give Stiles back." She demands, her tone clipped.

Yes, she put makeup on for this – let it not be said that Lydia Martin doesn't dress to kill.

The nogitsune quirks a grin, and in more ways than one it is _his_ grin – but there's such a taint to it, an awful darkness. It's carved to his lips not in any innocent mirth, but in anticipation of suffering. It's funny how he smiles without teeth, but there's more bite to it than there ever was. He looks at her with hungry eyes. "I _am_ Stiles, banshee-girl. Better. New and improved."

"I doubt that."

Not-Stiles rasps out a wheezy giggle. He brings up his left hand – it _has_ to be her imagination when she notes the disturbing similarities between his fingers and a spider's legs, how thin they've become, it has to be some trick – and taps the digits against his temple. The movement is seamless, birthed from the kind of grace the real Stiles could never muster. "Ooh," he croons, "a hitch up here. Don't say things like that or he'll _explode_." Another giggle. "And don't doubt that I'm better, Lydia. Much, much _better_."

She presses a cold smile to her mouth. "I'm not here to swap innuendo," she snaps, "I want Stiles back. _My _Stiles."

The nogitsune tilts his head slowly, sickeningly. "_Your _Stiles."

She sees where this is going, but Lydia is well-versed in this specific brand of manipulation. There's been enough slander scribbled on desks and bathroom walls at school about her – _LM is a whore, Lydia would fuck anything holding a lacrosse stick, Lydia Martin sucks Coach's cock to keep her grades up – _for her to practise the art of pretending she doesn't give a shit. She lifts her chin, sticks to her guns. "Yes. My Stiles. I give you something, you give me him."

A slow smirk unfurls across his lips. "What could _you _have that I don't, already? What could you _possibly _have to bargain?"

"The last kitsune tail."

He scoffs. "Liar."

She lifts her shoulders in a shrug, schooling a comically-sheepish expression onto her features. "Eh. Got you here, though, didn't it?"

Not-Stiles grins, full-blown this time, teeth and all. It sends darkness squirming to her bones – his smile is merciless, his eyes flat and evil. "What's the point?" he asks, and she realises that he never intended to trade with her. It was all a game to him, a hideous joke.

The punchline: a scream.

Lydia wedges her tongue between her teeth, flashing him a cat-like curling at the corners of her lips. "Research," she says lightly, "keep your enemies close, and all that."

"Anything to note?"

"Other than the, quite frankly, _novice _intimidation tactics? The cryptic phrases? The predictability? Oh, nothing."

He takes a step forward. She reacts with a jerky move back, but then cold wall is at her spine and not-Stiles is inches away.

He looms over her, head angled down to stare right into her eyes. She gazes boldly back; no trickster can make the banshee _squeal_.

"He begs me not to touch you," not-Stiles murmurs, "_all the time_, like you wouldn't _believe_. Please please _please_, y'know?"

"Give him back." Lydia hisses, and her voice is concrete.

"But," he ignores her, "I kinda wanna. Just to hear him shake." He brushes the back of his hand across her cheek, ghosting it over her lips. "Bet I could make _you _shake, huh, Lydia?"

"_Fuck. You._" She spits out the words with as much vehemence as she can muster, curls them up tight at the back of her throat and sharpens them on her teeth. They taste bitter, and even though she knows that Stiles – wherever he is – knows she's speaking to the trickster, she waits for that all-too familiar hurt to tug at his lips. She waits for him to stutter, to jut out his chin and stare at the ground.

As it is, the nogitsune jerks his head forward, then – and suddenly his nose is pressed to her cheek, his spider-fingers gripping her thigh. When he sighs "_I want my chaos_," against her skin, she smells blood on his breath.

Fear tremors through her, ice-cold, if not for herself then for the boy who cowers behind those empty eyes. She can see pock-marks on his neck, like he's been picking at his skin. The flesh there is grey, sickly-looking, his hands freezing on her leg.

She'll give anything to bring the warmth back.

"You'll get it," she promises them.

Not-Stiles sweeps his thumb up the smooth flesh of her inner thigh, pressing himself closer. Lydia's heart stutters – _traitor_, she thinks acidly, even as she reminds herself that fear or panic can sometimes trigger mixed reactions in the body, even as she makes note of the fact that it's _Stiles' _body that feels so warm against her skin, not the trickster's.

"Are you a whirlwind, banshee-girl?" He asks. His lips press to that sweetspot under her ear; her knees quake.

"A hurricane –" she counters with a whispered almost-snarl "– and I swear to God I'll strip you to the _bone_."

"Pretty words. Pretty..." his tongue laps against his teeth as he draws the word out, "_lips_. Do they scream truth?"

Lydia stretches her mouth wide to show him, but the nogitsune is quick – quicker than werewolves, even – and he brings silence with lips on hers.

It's nothing like the first. Not-Stiles kisses to murder the noise in her throat, while she'd wanted to stir his lungs to birth breath. He kisses in a way that speaks of hate; bruisingly, bitingly, _cruelly_. He licks into her mouth like every swipe of his tongue is a claim; as if he can own her. His teeth sink into the flesh of her bottom lip, just hard enough to make her gasp, and for an awful second – minute – she kisses back, her hands fisting in his shirt. She tastes mint, and lipstick, and _Stiles – _so much so that reality comes crashing down on her with enough force to knock the breath from her lungs. Lydia tries to pull away but the nogitsune holds on for moments more, buries his fingers in her hair and the gathered material of her skirt, rocks his hips into hers – a whine, deep in her throat –

He wrenches his head to the side suddenly, but doesn't move away. A smile steals over his lips. "Like that, did we?" He intones, and she can't tell who the taunt is for.

"Let go of me." She commands, but her voice is breathy and _weak_.

Not-Stiles chuckles and snaps his hips forward. Lydia sucks in a breath and bites back the hitching moan that bubbles in her throat.

_Reaction to the fear,_ she thinks. _Mixed messages_. _Stiles. Stiles._

"Do you _really _want me to, banshee-girl?" he murmurs softly. "Maybe you like it, I _really _do. You know what you _do _to us, Lydia?"

She feels her head thud back against the wall. His fingers skitter up her waist, her breasts, her neck, to join the others where they are fisted in her curls, then down again. The touches are gentle, almost tender; she knows he's imitating _exactly _what she imagines in the darkest hours of the night, when no-one's around to see her blush. She knows he's borrowing some of the real Stiles and dangling it like bait, just out of reach.

"You're a problem," he whispers, and it sounds almost confessional. "A distraction."

The voices get louder. She hears distant cries of decades ago, whispers, tremors. She thinks of screaming to drown them out, to find clarity, but his hand slips under her shirt and cups her breast. He pinches her nipple, firmly enough to send pain as well as pleasure quivering down her spine, but she clenches he jaw and purses her lips.

"Don't." She tells him, staring past the empty of his eyes.

He makes a tutting noise. "I've been in your head, Lydia. I know what you think about," his hips rock into hers slowly, slightly, and arousal strums low in her abdomen. "You want me to fuck you –"

"Stop it."

"_You do._" He insists, and darts his head down to lick a broad stripe from her collarbone to her neck, and she can't help the choked-off mewl that sighs from her lips. He yanks the left cup of her bra aside, and sharp panic floods through her even more than it already has – this is too much, this is too far – she cries out, wriggling in his grasp.

Not-Stiles leans forward, covers her body with his. "He's _so pissed_," he tells her delightedly, "ironic, right? His wildest dreams – Lydia Martin, against a wall, _moaning_ – and it's not even his body anymore."

Lydia cranes away from him, snarling. "It will _always _be _his body._" She grits out, struggling against his iron grip.

The nogitsune giggles. "No, banshee-girl, it's _mine. _Stiles is gone, don't you see? Stiles is _empty, _I carved out his soul and sat in its shell –"

"I can tell when you're lying –"

"You can tell when _Stiles _is lying." He yanks her head back to him and nips at her jaw, his knee pushing apart her thighs and jamming between them.

Lydia yelps, feels tears burning at her eyes. She squeezes them shut.

Not-Stiles presses a kiss to her mouth; a token of dominance. "I'll make you _scream, _banshee-girl."

His hand is at her throat when she whispers, "I'll scream for your death, nogitsune. I'll scream for silence. For _my_ Stiles."

The fingers round her neck tighten briefly, then come loose. A low chuckle against her cheek. "Killing you is... tempting. Fucking you is better. _But,_" he says sharply, "letting you go is gonna be _so _much fun."

Lydia's eyes fly open. The nogitsune steps back, his hands falling to his sides. "Why?" she demands. "Why?"

He gives a little smirk. "There it is."

He turns to melt back into the shadows, and she watches the faded, bloodstained material of his shirt until her vision blurs with tears and it shifts into darkness.

A sob wracks her body; she slides to the ground, cold seeping through her clothes. Her lips burn. "_God,_ Stiles," she whispers brokenly, "I'm sorry."

Of course, there's nothing to answer her except the ache between her thighs and the emptiness in her chest.


	2. Chapter 2

you're a shark and i'm swimming

Lydia knows Allison is deadly. How can she not, when the girl slings knives easier than she slings witty comebacks and can notch an arrow quick as blinking? She's seen it – when her best friend slips into _huntress _mode – in the forest after school, when the visions took over and she'd nearly embedded an arrow in her _eye. _If Isaac hadn't been there – well.

Lydia knows what it looks like. Sleek, graceful movements, tide rushing in on a moonlit shore. Effortless. She's seen Allison in action, sure, but she's never been _scared. _Not truly.

Until now, of course.

Allison stands at the foot of her bed, arms folded over her chest. Her hair is pulled back, leather jacket zipped tight, skirt devoid of wrinkles. Battle dress, Lydia notes, trying not to cower. Scott leans against the doorway with Kira, his expression flitting between apologetic grimaces and stern frowns, like it has been since she frantically punched in his number into her phone and called him to come get her from Echo House. He'd turned up in Stiles' jeep – turns out the pack have been using it anyway – and had promptly yelled at her and hugged her in intervals.

Miss Kitsune seems to be warring with herself, her hand twitching up towards his shoulder every so often, then falling back to her side. Lydia's not sure how to feel about her. Nice girl, sure, but mysterious.

"I seem to remember telling you," her best friend says stiffly, "_not _to go after him. Clearly."

Lydia sighs. "Allison –"

"_Clearly, _Lydia." Her voice doesn't rise above normal level, but there's an obvious authority to it. Her eyes are wide and furious, jaw clenched.

"I –"

"_God,_" Allison hisses, "just – what were you thinking? You could have _died – _and then what? Stiles comes back and we have to tell him you're gone? Scott adds another name to the list of deaths we could've prevented? I lose my best friend?"

Her body heaves, stalls, unshed tears glistening in the glossy brown depths of her eyes. Lydia reaches for her hand but she pulls away and steps back, shaking her head. If Isaac were here, not unconscious – _dying? _– in a hospital bed, he'd skim her elbow with one of his hands, to let her know he was there, but give her enough room to breathe. Lydia _knows, _even if she doesn't show it. She knows her best friend, knows her losses and her needs. In a lot of ways, Allison is like a wolf, however much she denies it. She will never ask for help. She'll deny weakness, cover it up, even become hostile if need be – acceptance of a helping hand is coaxed, not given, merely _allowed _after a certain amount of trust.

"I'm sorry," Lydia murmurs, and she _means _it. "Really, Allison. I am."

Her heart pounds in her chest, and a sickly empty feeling starts up, twisting round her gut. She can't lose Allison. She can't lose the friendship they've forged – Lydia's no stranger to the way female relationships are supposed to be like. Fickle. Fragile. And they _are, _in a way, if only because little girls are meant to compete with each other, always finding ways to be the prettiest or the cutest or the most popular. Easily broken things, they were made out to be, disrupted by a boy's attention or passing comments. Lydia's had friends like that, so the fact that she and Allison have managed to escape it and forge their relationship on stronger stuff means that she'll do _anything _to preserve it. Even if she has to swallow her pride.

"I was wrong." She whispers, her voice hitching in a way she _never _allows herself, and reaches for Allison's hand again.

This time, her best friend locks their fingers together tightly, albeit hesitantly. She looks down at where their palms meet, bites her lip. "Are you OK?"

Lydia very nearly rolls her eyes. How like Allison Argent, to know her well enough not to question her motives. She's well aware of the complicated relationship Lydia and Stiles have – or had, and _God _how that simple correction nearly twists her heart in two – and why she'd have gone after him. She doesn't care about that. All she wants to know is if Lydia is healing.

"I'm coping." She tells Allison firmly, her gaze flitting over to Scott. He doesn't look convinced, but she _is. _She is.

The words _he's different _bubble at the back of her teeth but with a swipe of her tongue they're gone, erased, and Lydia scorns them. Of course he's _different – _he's possessed by a fucking nogitsune, what did she expect? She didn't go to Echo House expecting to find a boy with honey eyes and a soft, upturned smile. She expected to find a demon wearing someone else's skin. She had no illusions as to warmth or affection; the trickster is cold, and he leeches any heat from all he touches.

_Still, _a voice like tendrils of vapour whispers, _you didn't expect _that.

Maybe it's true. Lydia hadn't expected the nogitsune to kiss her, or to drive his hips into hers with such purpose and grace that left her breathless – she hadn't expected him to leave her heart beating, much less racing with anything other than terror. He'd said that letting her go was going to be _so much fun, _and she's racked her brains every night since that day, and come up with nothing, other than the recurring image of a shark circling pale, useless legs.

It plays on her mind; the fin cutting towards her, the flat darkness of the water like glass, the sickly moonlight rippling as she kicks frantically backwards – and such _panic, _like she's never felt, not even that night on the field, quakes through her blood.

She meets Scott's eyes. The warm, reassuring brown of them look troubled. A moment spent swimming in them, and she knows he can tell. _Dread,_ they cry, _dread. _She knows it's what she's been feeling, but putting a name to the emotion is like ice-water replacing marrow – she's chilled to the core.

They both know there's not much hope. The nogitsune has its claws firmly hooked, and making it let go without tearing flesh from bone is going to be near impossible. If they don't do something, and fast, they'll lose him forever.

She squeezes Allison's hand. Her palm is cool and calloused from archery.

"Just... don't do it again, OK?" she says softly, her posture relaxing.

Lydia nods, but even as she smiles and says "OK," she's already planning her next move.

She's a banshee-girl, and a hurricane, and she does not stop.

/

"_SCOTT!_"

/

Pounding on the walls, the door. Her knuckles bleed. Red slicks her palms.

"Scott," she whimpers, "please."

/

_Lydia._

She's running in a hall filled with balloons, strawberry-blond curls streaking out behind her, mouth stretched into a perfect, crimson _O._

His voice echoes in her head, but it's warped, and she hears him following behind. She dry-sobs, chest heaving. She goes to call for help, but of course nobody's coming to save her. Allison's not here. Scott's not here.

The nogitsune is here. Someone screams for her; someone she knows.

She has to run.

_Banshee-girl, _**go faster**.

/

Lydia's in Echo House again, wedged between the solid plane of Stiles' chest and the cold metal bars. Her forehead is pressed against them, his nose brushing the ridge of her cheek.

The line of his body fits against the curve of her spine with a cruel kind of perfection; he _shouldn't _be so suited to her, not like this. Even as his fingernails dig into her wrists, even as his sour breath washes over her, she feels like her bones were only ever meant to knit with his.

"What _am _I gonna do with you, huh, Lyds?" the nogitsune sighs.

The familiarity with which he utters her name makes her breath come ragged in fear. "Let me go," she whispers.

He ducks his head, chuckles against her shoulder. "Can't do that," he mumbles into brown leather, "can't. Sorry, banshee-girl."

She sucks in a shuddering gasp, lets it out in a sob. "What do you _want?_" she hisses through gritted teeth. Her fingers curl around the metal bars, tightly, as if she can leech strength from the foundations.

"I'm hungry," he sings, sliding his hand up her back. His palm is the kind of cold that sinks into her bones, that _hurts. _"Us foxes – and the coyotes, and the ravens – we're all about _food._"

"Yeah?" Lydia manages to choke out. "Well you can just – just go eat _shit._"

His laugh, this time, is nothing short of ravenous. "You got so much fire in you, Lyds," he says. "I love it. Like... like moths." A giggle. "To a flame, y'know?"

She breathes in sharp, frigid air when he slams the edge of his teeth to her cheekbone. She sobs, clutching at the bars for support. "_Please_ - " she whimpers.

"We're all about food," he croons again, and then his fingers wind in her curls and he _yanks _her head back to expose her neck.

Stinging pain makes her shriek; she writhes in his grasp, staring up at him. He looks down at her with that hungry gaze again, stares at her like she's something to eat. The circles under his eyes are like bruises, sharply contrasting against the white of his flesh. Something ugly twists his mouth; he leans down to her with a smirk.

"Oh, banshee-girl," he murmurs into her mouth - no resistance, her lips parted in a cry - "you should know I'm in_satiable._"

The nogitsune swallows her sob with a bite, one hand fisted in her hair and the other digging into her hip. He tugs at her bottom lip, worrying at it almost gently.

"No -" Lydia snarls, but the word is barely out of her mouth when he pulls her from the bars, twists her round to face him and against his chest.

Not-Stiles presses his lips to hers, forcing them apart with a growl. His tongue is like a branding iron, licking over her teeth and gums – she feels as if he's burning her from the inside, breathing the devil into her lungs.

Her shoulders slam into the bars, cold metal digging into shoulder blades. Lydia struggles vehemently against him, fingers curling to claws and tearing at skin, at hair, at_ him. _She aches for him in the most horrific of ways, this not-Stiles, aches for flesh underneath fingernails and blood in her mouth – she kisses him, hates him, kisses him.

His fingers find the curve of her hip underneath her shirt, raking up, along the soft expanse of her belly – he hisses as if in satisfaction when her teeth sink into his bottom lip.

The hiss turns into a ragged snarl when she doesn't stop.

Blood bursts on her tongue, slick and coppery; he tries to pull back, digs his nails into her cheek, but Lydia keeps her eyes wide open and fixed on his and _holds on, _tears spilling over onto his lips.

Not-Stiles gives her one last shove, yowling like an injured cat. Her head smacks into the bars, and all goes black.

/

The ground is cold beneath her.

Someone's hand smooths itself over her back. A low melody, a soft crooning, just above her head. Stiles' voice, but of course it's not him.

The nogitsune sings, voice sweet as sin, of crows and foxes and the little girls who tempt them so.

Lydia wants to gouge out his eyes.

/

"He loves you, banshee-girl. He's screaming for you."

/

"Lydia? Lydia!"

Scott – sweet, caring Scott – wrenches the bars aside with barely a flinch, catching her as she collides with him. He pulls her into a brief embrace – head tucked under his chin, warmth at her back – then retreats.

His gaze is worried; "Are you alright?"

"_What are you doing here?_" she hisses, surging past him to address them both.

Stiles watches her nervously, and she wants _so badly _to fling herself at him, curl up in his arms and sleep and sleep and sleep, but the ghost of not-Stiles' lips still press at hers, so she shifts her stare back to Scott.

"Ly – what?"

"You can't be here – someone's going to die – I _told _you –" she chokes out, grief rising in her throat, death curling tight at the back of her spine.

A name hisses through the air. She ignores it, doesn't hear it, doesn't listen for silence after the scream.

Her chest heaves. "Scott, _go_!"

His eyes widen. He goes.

Stiles at her side (as he should be, she thinks), she runs after him. Their footsteps echo down the halls, no match for the whispering.

Someone's about to die, this she knows.

She just hopes to God it's the nogitsune.

"Lyds – I can't –"

She turns; Stiles has collapsed against the wall, panting, shaking his head. It strikes her then just how _young _he looks, how lost. His mouth gapes open, arms outstretched. She takes his hands without hesitation. He whispers her name; no innuendo, no scathing smirks. Only Stiles.

/

When Allison dies, it's like a part of her has been torn away. She feels the loss immediately, feels the snatches of her best friend sift through the air and dissipate – she screams, and tastes not-Stiles' laughter on her tongue.

The fight all but goes from her bones; she leans against the unconscious boy next to her for support.

She hears Scott's anguished screams, feels Isaac's heart _stop _and _start_, grips Stiles' hand tight. She stays there, rocking with the force of her own cries, mouth stretched wide open.

Her best friend – the dimpled new girl with the brightest grin she'd ever seen, the cutest skirt, the biggest heart. She'll never get to graduate. She'll never move out. She'll never see her dad again – _oh, God, _Lydia's ribs ache – she feels so hopeless, as if every light has gone from her life even though she's holding onto the spark _right here._

Hours later, when her tears still soak the skin of Stiles' neck, Scott returns.

The three of them, one still blissfully unaware of their loss, the others broken, sit slumped in the cold hallway.

"We're kids," he says, his voice raw.

She looks at him. There's something sharper to him, as if the blade that killed his first love cut away all his soft edges, too.

"Since when does the universe give a shit about that?" she asks him, and then, into the awful silence between them, "we're warrior children fighting for the sun."

He starts to cry, fresh tears replacing the blood from Allison's wound on his cheek. Had he laid his face on her chest, listened to her heartbeat slowly stutter to a halt? Lydia grips his shoulder.

_Warrior children fighting for the sun. _She remembers seeing that inscribed on a filthy brick wall in some nightclub with Jackson. Carved with charcoal, blue in the fluorescent lighting, it has never been more appropriate.


End file.
